I am currently earning my master's in teaching and I'm working on trying to outline the least restrictive learning environment for students with bipolar disorder and/or general mood disorders. This is something I'm genuinely interested in and want to pursue. I have a few questions that you might want to respond to; but, in general, I'm looking for your real life experience. Clinical research and scientific papers don't paint the whole picture, what has educating your child been like for you?

In your experience, what has helped your child succeed in school? What do you expect from a teacher, specialist, and the administration? If your child has ever had an amazing teacher, what was it that he/she did for your child? What has been the worst educational experience?

Please feel free to respond, no matter how brief your post might be. Any and all advice for a new teacher is appreciated.

Your question about what is the least restrictive learning environment for students with bipolar disorder took my breath away. There is no general answer. Everyone wishes for their child to be "normal" and educated in a general ed classroom in their neighborhood school, but any classroom is only as good as the teacher and the administrative support from the school.

When parents see that the general education classroom isn't working and may actually be a bad environment for their child, they see the value of a more restrictive placement, typically progressing from a self-contained classroom at the neighborhood school to a special ed school to residential placement. Some parents find that homeschooling is a good solution, perhaps to alleviate severe anxiety or to accommodate the child's cyclical waking-sleeping hours.

The range of bipolar symptoms (which may change with the season or due to growth, medication effects, or other causes) in conjunction with any other disabliing conditions (LD, autism, OCD, OT, speech/language, etc.) make it impossible to generalize about the LRE. Some students with bipolar disorder do not have enough impairment that they even need a 504 plan for accommodations. Some do well with a 504 plan.

Some need an IEP but are denied eligibility because somoe schools look at passing grades and evaluate only for LD without doing social, emotional, and behavioral assessments; these students are more likely to get in trouble in the classroom or on the playground, and may even be suspended; such students need some kind of intervention, which could mean a differerent teacher or different type of classroom; a competent functional behavior assessment (FBA) that produces a positive behavior intervention plan (BIP), the success of which depends on the quality of the FBA, the quality of the BIP, and the attitude, training,and execution of the BIP by the teacher and aide.

Many students with an IEP do have IEPs and a range of services and supports (at last on paper); some do well for a while and then things go out-of-whack, possibly resulting in a change of placement; some move from a more restrictive placement to a less restrictive one. Some kids on IEPs do OK at school, even in the general ed classroom, yet go home and rage and refuse to do homework; schools often assume poor parenting is the cause; however, when some kids with bipolar or other disorders are uncooperative or disruptive in the classroom, they never would say poor "teachering" is the cause!

The culture of the school and the attitude of the principal set the tone for success. Know-it-all administrators can thwart the entire exploratory process of an IEP meeting. But caring, curious administrators can set a positive and collaborative environment.

A teacher who establishes a structured environment provides security and predictability to the routine and expectations; but the teacher must also allow flexibility within the structure to accommodate good days/bad days and special circumstances. Structured-but-flexible shows students that the teacher respects them and their needs. A teacher who focuses on the positive and remains calm and reassuring, even in the face of low academic success or undesirable behavior, can give a child enough motivation to try again or try differently. When a teacher expresses faith in a child instead of disapproval, the child will try all the harder to win the teacher's approval and praise again. In such a classroom, a child with bipolar disorder or no disorder at all, is likely to have a good year.

Teachers can be given all the training in the world, but in the end, it's their attitude that makes all the difference. Teachers want to teach only kids "who want to learn" or who blame kids for being lazy, careless, unmotivated, rude, or otherwise morally lax are too rigid, too judgmental, and too uncaring to succeed in teaching a child struggling in the classroom with academics and behavior. Teachers who are rigid, judgmental, and even mean-spirited inflame or exacerbate problems. Teachers who don't know what to do sometimes abandon the child in the sense of low expectations and/or expecting a special ed teacher or aide to do the teaching; it's easy to pretty much neglect a child who is not particularly disruptive. Wonderful teachers might say that a kid with bipolar disorder takes a lot of work, but they won't be angry and grumbling about it.

The combination of factors that make or break a school year for a child with bipolar disorder are endless. Placement (general ed classroom or something more restrictive up to residential) is just one of those factors. One general ed classroom can be poison while another can be a joy, and the same goes for classrooms in residential settings and all placements in between. A general ed placement could be a success this year and a fiasco next year, even with the same teacher. There is no single LRE for educational success, and LRE on paper (i.e., the IEP) doesn't mean the educational experience is truly providing FAPE.

Browsing thru the messages in this education forum, both current and archives, should give you a feel for the range of placements and successes/failures/puzzles that people face in educating kids with bipolar disorder. Ideas for how to browse:

1.   http://www.bpchildresearch.org/cgi-bin/dcforum_public/dcboard.cgi?az=list&forum=DCForumID1&conf=DCConfID1

Topics are listed in "pages" (see bottom right corner) both current and archived. Choose any page and choose any topic from the list that sounds like it might be about school. But be aware that a topic might seem to be about a non-school topic (ex: meds) yet you may find comments about school and placement issues within the thread.

2.   http://www.bpchildresearch.org/cgi-bin/dcforum_public/dcboard.cgi?az=search&mode=new&s_conf=&s_forum=

For keywords, try "least restrictive environment" "regular" "self-contained," "residential" "private," "therapeutic," "placement." Also "homeschool." You'll probably get more relevant responses with "or" rather than "and" logic.

Instead of "Search All Forums," search only the "Education Forum." It speeds the search and you dont' have access to any other forums anyway!

Limit the search to the "Message" field, not "All." It will speed up the search.

"Search All Current Topics" is already selected — stick with that - AND - check the box to search the archives. This combination will search both current and archived messages at one time. There are about 400 "current" messages and the archives contain many, many more.

3.   Either method above will display a topic. With any topic as a starting point, you can go message by message either forward or backward in time by clicking on "Previous Topic" or "Next Topic." This will seem pretty random, but it will give you a very good sense of the multitude and issues affecting the education of kids with bipolar disorder, with and without regard to placement.

Wading thru thousands of messages may seem tedious, but it will give you a much more accurate portrayal of placement issues in relation to the multitude of considerations that enter into choosing a placement and that placement actually being successful.

Personally, I think it is a futile pursuit to ask which kind of placement is generally best. If you want to do meaningful research, focus on the characteristics of teachers who make school manageable, not miserable, for students with bipolar disorder. But keep in mind that a rotten administration can undermine the efforts of their best teachers. And also keep in mind that some kids are just too ill, too unstable to benefit from school yet compulsory attendance, the unthinkability of not educating a child, and/or parents' need for childcare while working push kids into the public classroom even when they are not available for learning.

Daunna Minnich
Moderator, JBRF Education Forum

You asked for our experience, good and bad, here it is:

The good: Before my daughter was diagnose (but certainly not before we started noticing problems), my daughter Hailey started her Kindergarten year. The teacher we had was very pleasant and just all around GREAT! Unfortunately, Hailey started having MAJOR problems at school (all the typical stuff for a bipolar child, not sitting still in class, resisiting doing designated activities, disobeying rules, talking excessively, having outbursts, and our favorite (ok there is a LOT of sarcasm there) the MELT-downs/rages. It got so bad we unenrolled her and put her in a parial hospitalization program for evaluation and diagnosis.

Personally I think the setting provided at the Partial Hospitalization program was the BEST environment for my child (too bad it cannot be a permanent placement). They have very small class sizes, activites are very routine (happen in the same order every day), children are given ample time to prepare or transitions, they spend part of the day doing various forms of counseling (peer-to-peer, play-therapy, cognative-behavioral therapy and group therapy) and the other part of the day the focus on academics. My daughter thrived in this environment!

The somewhat good: when she completed the program at the Partial hospitalization program (contact me if you want more information about that program, b/c i honestly think they have the magic formula when it comes to Bipolar children lol) she returned to traditional kindergarten. She returned to the same school, same teacher, ect. The teacher took a personal interest in my daughter and educated her self about the disorder and we were in constant contact working out new ideas to modify the instruction or accomodate Hailey. We still had some problems from time to time but it was leaps and bounds beyond where we had started.

The Bad: unfortunately, we then had to move, we moved across the state and it has been a nightmare. After a week in school here, the district placed my child in a Severe Self-Contained unit which serviced VERY low functioning children with EXTREME cases of Down Syndrome, Autism, ect. My daughter is very intelligent and very capable of learning (no real learning disabilities) so this placement was horrifying! Since then I have been able to get her moved to a Behvioral Intervention class which I think she will benefit from.

I recently found out that there is a school (the first and ONLY of its kind thus far, in Austin Texas that specifically caters to children with Bipolar Disorder. If you are really looking to see what I personally would consider the perfectly ideal learning environment for my child with Bipolar disorder then you should check them out, it seriously makes me wish i lived in Austin.

http://www.bipolarchild.com/Newsletters/0110print.html

Otherwise, like i said before, feel free to contact me and I will give you all the information you want about the partial hospitalization program. I think that if our public school systems offered a class/unit specifically designed after it our Bipolar children would better excel in school.